I haven’t been blogging much at all lately, this is due to school and WoW being a bit more demanding of my time than usual. One of the reasons I’ve been spending so much time on WoW is because I finally levelled a class to 80 that I have been wanting to play since I first laid eyes on the game: A Druid.
Tonight I dinged 80 after doing the first 60 levels with RAF and the last 20 with levelling my way alone through Outlands and Northrend. All this time I’ve levelled as Balance since I disliked feral… I already have a rogue and it feels much to roguey for me. Now that I’m 80 I decided to go Restoration as mainspecc. Ever since I’ve abandoned my priest I never really healed on a char again (some attempts on my paladin though) so I decided to try out druid healing and I really feel comfortable doing it. It (to me) feels similar to priesthealing, with lots of AoE healing, and that’s probably the reason why I like Restoration so much.

As for now the big gear grind has begun again starting with nothing but blues and the two Brewfest trinkets I was able to get my hands on before it ended (I actually dinged 78 about half an hour before Brewfest ended :P). Mostly I’ll be getting offset items since with the upcoming patch all your emblems are going to be transformed into Justice Points anyway and I want to save up for tier 10.

Unfortunately I’m really inspirationless at the moment so I just made this little post to let you guys know what I’m doing right now. Oh… And meet Jhaelyn, my lovely new level 80 Restoration Nightelf Druid!

After bumping into a very angered cleaner on my way up to the Computer Room (the elevator is broken and he was cleaning te stairs, stairs where everyone was running up to 😛 Go figure!) and smelling a nauseating peach scent coming out of the girls toilet (don’t ask me why, they like to clean the toilets here with something that smells ricidulously much like peach flavoured candy) I finally sat myself before a computerscreen. Then I had to wait for the computer to actually start up (people, the screen says LOG OFF after you finish, not SHUT DOWN *grumbles*) which took a while, cuz uni computers are bad. Now I can finally post 😀 So let’s start with my week.

Raiding has been awesome the past week. Not only am I know in a fixed ICC 10 man (something I wasn’t for a long, LONG time) we actually made a lot of progress the past week in ICC 25 man. Our first Varlithia Dreamwalker kill/heal? was accomplished (gogo Dice!) and we managed to get Blood Queen down to 3%. We figured out what went wrong on the Blood Queen tries (no sunders!) and that we could do with 5 healers instead of 6, so we’re hoping to down her tonight or tomorrow, when the server isn’t fucking up and permits us to actually fight against her instead of lag. I took with me some nice new gear, including shoulder and my t10 head (which btw is ugly as hell, hunter’s are worse off with their tier than usual) and I got the Primordial Saronites I needed to make my boots. So I’m a happy hunter.

Leveling is still going on, I’ve decided to pay attention to my mage in the weekends more often, and she is now level 74 and working her way through the Dragonblight zone. Queueing for random dungeons has actually helped a lot with her progress, seeing as I’m getting tired of the quests that I’ve done over and over and over. I think my mage will hit 80 by the end of march, but I hope sooner ofcourse. It all kind of depends on how much time I have to actually play her. Anyway she is still my little baby gnome, and I’m still stunned with the damage she does. 5k arcane blast crits on level 74 are a indicator I really need to watch out for the damage I will be doing on level 80! On professions I decided to give her Enchanting and Herbing, since I don’t have a herber on the Alliance side anymore and I don’t have a really high level enchanter.

What I did the most this week is something I thought I’d never do. I faction changed my dear sweet human warrior. I’ll do a seperate post on her when I get home. But so far I really like her as a Troll (yes, she’s a troll, I hate orcs and taurens alike and I’m not rolling undead just cause of Will of the Forsaken) and I feel like I can do more that I want on her now. She still is my little baby char and when I like her enough, I might even roll back to her in Cataclysm, however that’s still so far off that I can’t really say anything about that. Also I’ve been making a lot of money on AH by selling Frozen Orbs, Titanium Ore, Eternal Belt Buckles and Heavy Borean Armor Kits. All the money is gone now tho, seeing as I got some new gear that had to be socketed and enchanted. Luckily my boyfriend was nice enough to help me out and he socketed and enchanted the new boots on my hunter for me.

I haven’t really done much about Achievements this week altho I’m still working away at becoming Elder Pieces. My warrior earned the Looking for Multitudes achievement and 25 reputations on Exalted, including the Ogri’la and Aldor reps I farmed last week. Overall I’ve had some fun on WoW this week, and feel like playing some more again, if school will let me ofcourse.

This week I would like to Refer to the WTB: World of Warcraft blog. The author of this blog participated in my Shared Topic. She would be a Warlock if she were to start over again with WoW.

So today I had an exam which was VERY early this morning. I completed my questions in half an hour and took the subway home. I kinda felt bummed to come such a long way through the cold (yes it’s cold here) and complete everything within 30 minutes. However this gave me some time to chat up with some people in the guild, seeing as I could actually go home now instead of staying at school and using the school computers.

Raidingwise it has been a calm week for me. Due to lots of schoolwork (2 papers, internet assignment and the exam from this morning) I had to cancel almost all raids on my hunter. Kinda bumming but hey, school still beats WoW when it comes to setting priorities. The only raid I did do this week was fridaynight on my paladin. My boyfriend has started up a little 10 man on friday, for alts of the guild that he’s in and where I’m invited to join on my pala to tank as well. It was a bit of a couples raid (3 couples haha) and actually it went quite well. We downed ICC’s first wing without any problems and had some nice tries on Dreamwalker, a boss we really wanted to do. It was fun and casual and it made me feel happy.

Leveling was an activity I could finally do again, my mage is now level 73 and after rediscovering her spells and abilities again (some things were a bit vague for me after not playing her for a while) I got into leveling again. I even joined a succesful random dungeon group to Azjol’Nerub which gave me a new belt and some quest rewards I could sell for monies. As my school is getting less stressful I hope to be able to level my mage a bit more and finally ding 80.

Achievements were something my attention was and still is focused on at the moment. I want the Violet Proto Drake on my hunter, she will be my 3rd char to acquire it, and last week Fool for Love ended and the Lunar Festival started. After struggling I managed to get the Fool for Love achievement on sunday, gathering bracelets really sucked, and I made a start on gathering Elders for the Lunar festival. One downside to the silly Lunar festival is the fact that your mailbox gets spammed with mail from Elders. I don’t even open the silly red envelopes anymore but just insta delete it. It’s junk and I just want to get rid of it.

Most of my time was spended on PvP the past week and weekend. I’m trying to do the BG daily everyday to gather arenapoints for my warrior and honor ofcourse and am now also PvPing on my hunter a lot. Even tho it takes getting used to (I always played Melee PvP), my hunter turns out to be a real killing machine and currently I’m on 4k honorable kills, shooting my way through varios battlegrounds.

As a closer I would like to introduce you to a lovely blog I found through Blog Azeroth. It’s a mage blog which I really love to read, the layout is very pretty and it teaches me stuff as upcoming mage! http://mischiefmagicandrocketscience.blogspot.com/
It makes me laugh and think over stuff as a starting mage, I really recommend reading it!

The Problem
Everyone experiences it some time while leveling on a PvP server. Being ganked by a member of the opposing  faction. They’re either of the same level range as you, or way higher. When they are the same level as you, you can work your way around it. Can you take revenge when they are letting their guard down? Do it. If you don’t want to, try to get as far away as possible from that person, he or she probably ganks you because you are after the same quest or because he or she just finds it amusing to gank you. The real problem arises when you are getting ganked by a player that is a level that is way higher than you are and apparently has business in the area that you are questing in. A few minutes ago my mage, who is level 56, got ganked by a level 80 tauren shaman in Felwood. I needed to kill furbolgs for my quests, he needed to kill them to gain exalted reputation with Timbermaw Hold. As lvl 56 you won’t stand a chance versus a lvl 80 player.

The Solution nr 1: Get your own 80 char out.
A simple solution to get rid of the level 80 that is killing you in your quest area is getting your own level 80 char out. I did the exact thing, and picked my warrior. Why? My warrior is full pvp geared, and has useful macro’s to counter casters. I finished of the shaman with only grabbing damage from his flame shock. A smart strategy is to park your 80 char close to your leveling toon and keep it there if the problem returns. A quick relog and you will be able to take your revenge. Do it often enough and they will give up. I mean, no one likes a 5 minute ress timer right?

The Solution nr 2: Go to another area.
This is the solution for people who are leveling their first char. Unfortunately you can’t do much about being ganked on a lowbie if you don’t have the resources to deal with it. The only solution then is to go to another area to level. Being killed over and over again by the same player is not fun and will only make your leveling experience sad and longer.

The Solution nr 3: Ask a friend to help.
This only goes for if you have friends on the server you are playing on, and if they have 80 chars. Just ask them for help. If you only have quests in the area that you are being ganked just ask them to act as your bodyguard for a bit untill you have finished your quests. You might get less experience if they are with you in your group, but atleast your questing will be done quicker and safer if they are around to protect you.

The Conclusion
Ganking will happen everywhere and all the time. If you feel the need to take revenge on those that gank you, by all means do it. If you are no the type to do that, try questing in another area. You ultimately control your own actions, and not that of other players. And if you really dislike being ganked, don’t go to a PvP server 😉

My mage hit level 40 halfway January and after that I kind of had more important things to do than leveling her, so I put it off untill schoolwork was done. I’ve leveled her casually and today she’s atleast level 51.

The moment I dinged 40 I finished up all my quests in Dustwallow Marsh, due to obvious ganking reasons in Stranglethorn Vale I decided to do the largest chunk from 30 to 40 in Dustwallow Marsh, and I headed out to Gadgetzan. For some reason that’s been a tradition of mine, when I ding 40, I head out to Gadgetzan to start picking up quests there. Have done it on all my chars, and doing the same on my mage.

The reason why Gadgetzan (and Tanaris for that matter) is an excellent point to go to at 40 is the amount of “easy to do” quests there. In Gadgetzan you pick up quests to kill the Wastewander crew and gather the water pouches they drop. You can pick up all other qeusts, but make sure you do the Wastewander quests first. After Gadgetzan move to Steemwheadle Port and pick up all quests that have to do with the pirates. When you’ve grinded your way through the Wastewander and Pirate quests, make sure to pick up the follow up to Wastewanders too, you should atleast have dinged 1 level and maybe even 2. After that pick up all Zul’Farrak quests you can find in Gadgetzan and the Shimmering Flats in 1000 Needles. When you leveled in Dustwallow before you should also have a quest from Tabetha that requires you to go into Zul’Farrak. If you don’t have that, pick it up. All in all you should have about 6 quests for Zul’Farrak and then it’s time to queue. When the queue is taking long, don’t worry. Do the Dunemaul Ogre quest or the Insect kill quests if they are available to you. When you do get into Zul’Farrak you should be able to get a decent amount of experience from the dungeon itself. If you do all quests it will probably give you another level together with the Zul’Farrak run. When you only have orange/red quests in Tanaris it’s time to move to another area.

Another excellent area in the bracket 40-50 is the Hinterlands. When you arrive here talk to the draenei who gives you 3 quests. Make sure you do atleast the wolves one and the killing of the troll and his spider. When you enter the keep you will get two additional quests. Do them both. You can choose for yourself whether to do the chainquest that starts from the Draenei (Featherbeard quest). I would recommend doing it because it is some nice experience. After that stop in the Hinterlands. The Sharpbeak questline is a very fun questline to do, but with the new level gear a waste of time because it simply keeps you too long in Hinterlands.

By the time you’ve done the quests I mentioned in Tanaris and Hinterlands you should have reached level 44 or 45. This could depend on whether or not you’re using leveling gear. When you have hit 45 you can go back to Gadgetzan and see what quests have turned yellow for you and do them. At 46 it’s time to move on to another area: Searing Gorge. There’s a lot of easy to do quests there and by the time you’ve done them all you should have reached level 50 or be very close. If you don’t know how to get to Searing Gorge, there is a little path in the far west of Blasted Lands. When you reach Searing Gorge move to the northwestern part of the area and look for a path up the mountains. There will be a little encampment of the Thorium Brotherhood. They offer you about 7 or 8 quests. Pick them all up. Move back down and start killing spiders and all other things you need to kill. Near the Thorium Brotherhood encampment there are 2 men standing in what seems a random place. 1 of them offers a quest, take it and finish the whole line. It combines well with the Thorium Brotherhood quests. The quests of the Thorium Brotherhood that take place in the Slag Pit can be reached quite easily. The entrance to get the plans and kill the overseer is just below a little elevator. The entrance that’s closest to the dinosaurs you have to kill is the most right little cave in the Cauldron. To get in there you have to jump down from the ledge. Due to the exp you get from the quests and the amount of mobs you need to kill you should be able to ding 50 from the quests there. If you’re not, don’t worry. There are some quests in Tanaris that require lvl 48 to do (killing the elementals for example). If you haven’t done those yet, now is a good time to do them. If you’re still not 50 by then I recommend queueing for a dungeon and ding 50 from that.

If you did ding 50 after the quests from Searing gorge: GZ! Now it’s time to go to new areas, get your class quests and prepare for the long way from 50 to 58. Which areas you should consider from 50 to 58 will be discussed in part 2 of the 40-60 leveling bracket! So stay tuned for more blogging :>